Thursday, December 8, 2011

Thirty-one years ago today, Yoko Ono watched a smiling gunman fire five bullets into John Lennon's body. Armed with a .38 revolver, the gunman proceeded to eerily leaf through J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye".

The doorman of John and Yoko's 72 St and Central Park West home asked the killer if he knew what he had done. The killer responded: "I just shot John Lennon".

stranger than fiction.

This photograph by Annie Liebovitz was taken on the day of Lennon's death.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

adrien de bontin, my dear friend, photog, and aesthetic illuminator, has a new website. adi, as we fondly call him, is a global citizen currently situated in buenos aires. like most talented creative minds, he's always on the go. follow his camera lens around the world at adriendebontin.tumblr.com. and, enjoy some tastes of his eyes:

Thursday, June 16, 2011

If you are a lover of New Orleans jazz, add WWOZ 90.7 FM, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Station, to your iTunes playlist. My friend Ross turned me onto this station a while back, and it's takes me to NoLA each and every time I listen...a great Pandora alternative.
Here are the instructions to add a station to your itunes (which I find to be the easiest way to access the stream):

Listen to f-bomb-dropper-extraordinaire Samuel l. Jackson read the highly acclaimed children's book parody,"Go the Fuck to Sleep" by Adam Mansbach. Takes me back to my days as a nanny. Follow @thebadnanny on Twitter for related humor.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

last night i had a dream that my apartment was smashed to pieces. it was like pete townshend had been spent the night, and everything was broken; lampshades, hairbrushes, jewelry, plates, cups, silverware, walls, frames. it was strangely beautiful, though, and in my dream i didn't seem to mind it much at all. it brought me back to a poem by pablo neruda i read in professor maraniss's class at amherst. the poem is titled "ode to broken things" and is from neruda's 1956 compilation of odes to commonplace things called odas elementales. i especially enjoy the last line, "tantas cosas inútiles/que nadie rompe/pero se rompieron." the poem resonates much better in spanish, so those of you blessed with bilinguality jump here. enjoy.

Ode to broken things by Pablo Neruda

Things get broken
at home
like they were pushed
by an invisible, deliberate smasher.
It's not my hands
or yours
It wasn't the girls
with their hard fingernails
or the motion of the planet.
It wasn't anything or anybody
It wasn't the wind
It wasn't the orange-colored noontime
Or night over the earth
It wasn't even the nose or the elbow
Or the hips getting bigger
or the ankle
or the air.
The plate broke, the lamp fell
All the flower pots tumbled over
one by one. That pot
which overflowed with scarlet
in the middle of October,
it got tired from all the violets
and another empty one
rolled round and round and round
all through winter
until it was only the powder
of a flowerpot,
a broken memory, shining dust.

And that clock
whose sound
was
the voice of our lives,
the secret
thread of our weeks,
which released
one by one, so many hours
for honey and silence
for so many births and jobs,
that clock also
fell
and its delicate blue guts
vibrated
among the broken glass
its wide heart
unsprung.

Life goes on grinding up
glass, wearing out clothes
making fragments
breaking down
forms
and what lasts through time
is like an island on a ship in the sea,
perishable
surrounded by dangerous fragility
by merciless waters and threats.

Let's put all our treasures together
-- the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold --
into a sack and carry them
to the sea
and let our possessions sink
into one alarming breaker
that sounds like a river.
May whatever breaks
be reconstructed by the sea
with the long labor of its tides.
So many useless things
which nobody broke
but which got broken anyway.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

stumbled across this project on good ole GOOD magazine...from the photographer, michael galinsky:

"In 1989, following in the footsteps of Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, and William Eggleston, I drove across the country and documented malls across America. I had a cheap Nikon FG-20 and an even cheaper lens - but I had a lot of passion.

I shot about 30 rolls of slide film in malls from Long Island to North Dakota to Seattle. It was hard to tell from the images where they were taken, and that was kind of the point. I was interested in the creeping loss of regional differences. I thought a lot about Frank's "The Americans" as we drove from place to place without any sense of place."

talk about a time capsule...i like his last remark about the homogenous look and feel of these places. same shitty tiled-over, fake topiary, neon-light schtick goin on everywhere.

he's apparently trying to publish a book...thus explaining the kickstarter piece of it. if you've got some extra change lying around (perhaps that tax return...?), head on over and donate.

also, spent too much time looking up the song not to mention that 1: it's great, and 2: it's sleepyhead - "punk rock city usa"...good luck finding it.

"the grateful dead movie" will be showing on over 500 big screens nationwide for one night only...tonight. the film, which hasn't been played at a movie theater 1977, will be coupled with never-before-seen jerry and bob interviews taken during the production of the film. for those of you (like me) who never saw this epic rock and roll moving picture, it includes live performances "u.s. blues", "one more saturday night", "casey jones", "playing in the band" and "sugar magnolia" (and more) at winterland arena. seems like a nice wednesday evening sf event, think i'll check it out.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Monday, April 4, 2011

if you're in the bay, check out bicycle coffee co. they make organic, fair-trade coffee and deliver it via bicycle to offices and shops around they bay. i like knowing that a rugged man climbed many a hill just so i could enjoy these peruvian-grown, san francisco-roasted beans. yum.

Friday, April 1, 2011

mariel clayton, a photographer with a subversive sense of humor, cleverly portrays barbie as a psychotic narcissist... a la american psycho. these are funny, and kind of the opposite of cindy sherman's series of women in vulnerable settings.

artists jeff greenspan and hunter fine installed a series of "hipster traps" (see above) throughout new york city. the bait includes sunglasses, a yellow bicycle chain, a holga camera, a can of PBR and a pack of american spirits. fyi, greenspan is the same artist who pulled last summer's “tourist lane” prank. i like this guy. next up, "bridge and tunnel traps" (see below).

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

my kicky and enterprising friend from minneapolis, @bahertz, has a blog called "gellyvision" (his nickname) where he publishes picture narratives. below, an open letter he wrote me last week. this guy has a very keen eye. subscribe to his blog for more visual confections.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

i remember when i first saw nashville i searched endlessly for this tune and couldn't turn it up...not sure what made me think of it, but this song's great and i'm glad it's now out there.

christina raines is beautiful here...and believe it or not, she'd never sang before. i was reading the comments on the vid, and someone called attention to how closely she resembles emmylou harris here...spot on.

Friday, March 25, 2011

benjamin d. henning from the university of sheffield created this here map...designed to display the relationship between population density and historical earthquake activity, this map gives you a good idea of the places in the world where serious disaster looms. those areas of the map that appear swollen represent areas of high population density, red represents high earthquake activity, so red, swollen areas are the ones to look for...

with a tip of the hat to stereogum (..and a lamely titled post), i'll say you should all check out craft spells. with a style similar to label mates wild nothing, these guys draw on the sounds of early 80's new wave and jangle...nothing new here, but fans of radio dept. and twin shadow will no doubt enjoy.

have to say their label, captured tracks, is up to some good things. look out for their debut idle labor out March, 29.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

crystal stilts' new album, in love with oblivion, is due for release april 22nd, and below is one hell of a song that'll be on it. this one's been kicking around for a while...i first came across it on a daytrotter set they did a while back, but this studio recorded version is fleshed out and trudges along with a burnin 'waiting for the man'-style piano plink.

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